Danny is the proverbial basket-on-the-doorstep baby, found by Hank and Elmira Walters, a childless couple who welcome him into their home because they need a new topic over which to bicker. Bicker they do, and fight just as often, from the day they attempt to settle on a name, to the day eighteen years later, when Danny and Hank come to blows and Danny leaves home in company with Dr. Kirby, bottler and supplier of the miracle elixir, Siwash Indian Sagraw. For years Danny wanders aimlessly--from Illinois to Indiana to Ohio, back to Illinois, then into Tennessee and points south--sometimes in company with Dr. Kirby, sometimes alone; sometimes working as a circus roustabout, wild man from Borneo, or Patagonian cannibal; sometimes only bumming around, but always feeling inextricably bound to Dr. Kirby, as though by fate. At last, as in most comedies, all problems are resolved when Danny finds contentment with his true parents, and Dr. Kirby is helped to find the lost love after which he has quested for the greater portion of his life. --Book Review Digest, 1912

olks. When she was born her mother was homesick
fur all that style and fur York State ways, and so
she named her Elmira.

But when she married Hank, he had considerable
land. His father had left it to him, but it was all
swamp land, and so Hank's father, he hunted
more'n he farmed, and Hank and his brothers
done the same when he was a boy. But Hank,
he learnt a little blacksmithing when he was growing
up, cause he liked to tinker around and to show how
stout he was. Then, when he married Elmira
Appleton, he had to go to work practising that
perfession reg'lar, because he never learnt nothing
about farming. He'd sell fifteen or twenty acres,
every now and then, and they'd be high times till
he'd spent it up, and mebby Elmira would get
some new clothes.

But when I was found on the door step, the land
was all gone, and Hank was practising reg'lar,
when not busy cussing out the fellers that had bought
the land. Fur some smart fellers had come along,
and bought up all that swamp land and dreened
it, an

Reviews

A humorous and romantic story full of exciting adventures. The ending becomes a little predictable to me as some characters are introduced. The ending is abrupt and left me wanting a longer climax, but I was happy it ended the way I had hoped.
There is a chapter where the N-Word is used extensively, as is common in this period writing, but could be offensive to some modern readers.

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